Providence Library Negotiations Lead to New Civic Coalition

-- Library Journal, 8/18/2006

A municipal working group will negotiate a contract between Providence and the Providence Public Library (PPL), which receives a significant chunk of its budget from private funds, for library service, and it's possible that PPL's branches would become a city department. However, several interested parties are not part of the negotiation, as the Providence Journal reported, so they've formed a new Library Advocates Coalition to analyze the situation. Members include the Library Reform Group, Mount Pleasant Friends of the Library, Smith Hill Friends, and Save Our Branches. The coalition aims to analyze, among other things, the cost of maintaining nine neighborhood branches and the library's governance structure.